Three pastors were discussing how they decide what portion of the weekly offering is allocated to God and what portion of it is to be used for their salary. The first pastor said: “It’s simple. I just put everything on the table, close my eyes, and pray. Then, I toss everything in the air, whatever lands on the table is for God, and whatever falls on the floor is for my personal use.” The second said: “Instead of a table, I draw a circle around me. Whatever falls inside the circle is for God and whatever falls outside is for my personal use.” The third pastor, who has been following attentively, felt the other pastors were not giving God enough control of the situation. He explained how he does it: “I don’t use a table and I don’t use a circle. After a prayer, I take everything and toss it in the air. The portion that belongs to God ascends.”

We think a lot about portions when we think about food and money and property. We talk about portion control with our food in order to reach or maintain a healthy body weight. We talk about where we use or donate portions of our money each month. We talk about portions of the state, portions of the country, portions of the world. We talk about donating a portion of our income to charity. We understand the word portion. But do we ever stop to really think about what it means? Merriam-Webster says that portion is “an individual’s part or share of something: such as: (a) a share received by gift or inheritance, (b) a dowry, (c) enough food especially of one kind to serve one person at one meal.” A portion is part of something. If that is true, then what does the author of Lamentations mean when he says, “The Lord is my portion.”

The author of Lamentations is not the only biblical writer to say that the Lord is his portion. There are about ten times that God is referred to as our portion. Four of those times are in the Psalms:

In Psalm 73, the author writes, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

In Psalm 142 is said to have been written by David in the cave hiding from King Saul. In the midst of that, David writes, “I cry to you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.’”

In Psalm 119 that is all about the law says, “I remember your name in the night, O Lord,

and keep your law. This blessing has fallen to me, for I have kept your precepts. The Lord is my portion; I promise to keep your words.”

Psalm 16 says, “Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names upon my lips. The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; I have a goodly heritage.”

Five of the others are talking about the division of the Promised Land between the twelve tribes of Israel. And the last is our passage from Lamentations. So what does that say about the meaning for that phrase as used here in Lamentations 3? Let me suggest two things:

First, the phrase “The Lord is my portion” clearly has a poetic quality to it. The Psalms are the hymns of the Israelites, the songs of their faith. They are poetic, wrapped in imagery and metaphor. The phrase “The Lord is my portion” fits right in with that. It is clearly being used as a metaphor. It’s not like the Psalmist is thinking that the universe could literally be divided into portions and handed out. Here, you get the earth and you get the oceans and you get the sky and I get God. I think it’s pretty clear that the author of the Psalms is not using this phrase literally. Rather, the author is using it as a form of comparison. So how is God our portion, metaphorically speaking?

Beyond the occurrences in the Psalms, this reference to the Lord as our portion appears five times in connection with the dividing up of the Promised Land. The land is divided into twelve segments. Then Joshua divvies out those sections to the tribes of Israel as God has told him to. Each tribe connected to one of the sons of Jacob, later renamed Israel, gets its own land. The tribe of Levi, however, is not given land. Here is what the version in the book of Deuteronomy says about it: “The Levitical priests, the whole tribe of Levi, shall have no allotment or inheritance within Israel. They may eat the offerings by fire that are the Lord’s portion, but they shall have no inheritance among the other members of the community; the Lord is their inheritance, as he promised them.” The Lord is their inheritance, their portion.

I think that the author of Lamentations was probably drawing on this story when he wrote the words we read for this morning. He was writing to Israelites living in exile in the land of Babylon. They had lost their land, the thing that for so long had defined them. They had lost their temple, the center of their worship. Now, they were left feeling like they no longer had an inheritance from God. God had rejected them and given their inheritance away to others. But the author of Lamentations draws them back to their history. He weaves them back into the story in a new way. Instead of identifying with the twelve tribes that had received the inheritance of land, Lamentations connects them to the tribe of Levi, the priests of God. The exiles were without land, just like the Levites. The exiles did not yet have a central place of worship, but they had to begin to establish that. They had to recognize that they were still a part of God’s people and God was their inheritance.

As Christians who have been grafted into God’s family tree through Jesus, we have no claim to the promised land either. We are exiled and spread across the land. So the words of Lamentations are a promise for us as well. The Lord is OUR portion. This promise is comforting, but it also raises a couple of questions for me. First, if the Lord is our portion, is the Lord NOT the portion of others? Is God completely absent from some? At first, this question was troublesome to me because, as much as I didn’t believe it to be true, I couldn’t really come up with a reason why. But then a thought came to me. What if the inheritance is not about being blessed with a gift but about being given a responsibility? The twelve tribes of Israel, that were given a portion of the land, were given the responsibility of caring for and overseeing that land. They were responsible for the people within their tribe who lived in the land that was theirs. The land still belonged to God and God was with them to oversee it, but the land was their responsibility. For the Levites, God was their responsibility. Not that they were to somehow direct or oversee God and God’s actions, but more that they were to oversee the praise and thankfulness of the people toward God.

The other question that was raised for me was, “If the Lord is our portion, are we only getting a portion of God?” The answer to this question, I think, has to be Yes and No. No, we are not only getting a portion of God because God makes all of Godself available to us. But yes, we only get a portion of God because our human bodies and minds cannot handle the fullness of God. All we are able to take in is a portion of God, yet all of who God is and what God has has been given to us in Jesus Christ. The Lord, all of the Lord, is our portion, but we can only receive a portion into our mortal bodies.

So, what do we do with this? If the Lord is our portion, how does that impact the way we live our lives? How does it impact the way we interact with the world around us? I think that our passage from 2 Corinthians may provide us a little insight into those questions. Paul writes, “Now as you excel in everything–in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you–so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking.” Paul and his comrades seem to have faced some troubles and are in need of help. Paul is writing to the church in Corinth to encourage them to be generous in sharing the gifts they have received from God with others. He goes on to talk about another church that, though they have very little themselves, shared generously with Paul’s group. The Corinthian church has an abundance of resources, so Paul is hopeful that they will provide some help to Paul and his crew. He asks them to give in a way that provides for a fair balance. He says that it is a matter of the church in Corinth giving of their abundance to lift up others who are in need. And then perhaps the tides will turn in the future and the Corinthians will have a need.

If the Lord is our portion and we are therefore to oversee the worship and thanksgiving of God’s people toward God, then one way we do that is by caring for one another. Just as the twelve tribes were called to give lodging and food to the Levites who came to live in their land, so must we seek to provide for those who are children of God but who cannot provide for themselves. That can seem like a daunting task as we look around us and see all of the poverty and illness and mental exhaustion and trauma that exists in our world. We may feel overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the problems. But the Lord is our portion. God is with us and all we are to do is seek to live into our responsibility to go with one another to the altar of God and offer up praise and worship and thanksgiving. And in the process, we care for others and invite them to come along. May God’s steadfast love and mercy be with us and never leave us. Amen!